


City Lights

by sibley (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Trans Female Character, is it a meet cute? you decide, me posting more ralphsue: another great idea from ME, ralph but hes comic accurate :/, semi implied alchohol abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 15:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15391917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Trying to get away from the event held in her honor to get some fresh air, Sue Dearbon ends up outside on a balcony, and finds a superhero party crasher climbing the wall.





	City Lights

**Author's Note:**

> *throws some rocks at todd helbing's window* please just tell me where sue is i miss her...

It’s very hard to slip away from parties thrown in your honor, but Sue’s getting pretty good at avoiding eye contact and pretending she can’t hear the latest person trying to get her attention by the time she sneaks out the doors to the balcony that everyone else is wearing too thin clothes to be on.

Sue takes a deep breath of the cold night air and stretches her arms above her head, cracking her back, and looks up to see a superhero climbing the wall of her parent’s house, staring right down at her.

“Um,” Sue says, blinking up at where he’s clinging to a windowsill like a rather large bug, “hi?”

“This isn’t what it looks like!” He yelps, almost falling. Sue’s not entirely sure what his name is, she just knows she’s seen him on the news a handful of times. She doesn’t really keep track of superhero activity all that often, although Vibe seems nice and Kid Flash is cute enough. “I wasn’t breaking in!”

“So what are you doing?” Not all that concerned for her safety, although she was a little worried about how the house’s high tech security system hadn’t managed to catch someone literally climbing their wall, Sue leans against the stone railing of the balcony, resting her chin in her hands. This is a _very_ welcome break from the stuffy atmosphere of the party.

Sounding more than a little embarrassed, he tells her, “I was in the neighborhood, kind of, and I heard about a party, and… I wanted to go, but there was no way I would ever get invited to something like _that,_ and then I was like ‘what if you have to pay to get in’, but I didn’t have any money and I didn’t want to take the chance, so I decided to-”

“Crawl through my window and crash my party,” Sue finishes, laughing a little into her hand. Yeah, no way this guy could be evil. He’s too incompetent at even a very simple task like climbing through a window, which is no doubt way easier when you have superpowers.

“This is your party?” Sue steps back as he swings toward her, landing on the edge of the balcony. She's not afraid of him, but she's a little concerned with being accidentally squashed. “And your house?”

“My parents’ house, not mine, since I don’t live with them, but yeah-my coming-out party.” Sue shrugs and smiles a little. “My idea of a joke. Have the debut for me that my parents have been pushing for at the same time my name and marker changes and everything else finally comes through.”

She’s actually a little surprised he didn’t know who she was. Not because Sue’s that vain, just because she’s been a pretty big deal lately. That nice reporter, Ms. Park, even volunteered to do a handful of interviews with her to put in more reputable papers than the usual stuff that tries to keep up with her. Which is why she’s not really worried about outing herself to him-she’s out to the whole city, and to everyone who reads those trashy magazines whose writers sometimes follow her around.

He laughs loudly at that and literally wraps his fingers all the way around the cut out holes in the railing, which makes Sue snap her own fingers and point to him. “You’re the stretchy man!”

“Ugh, I _wish,”_ possibly-stretchy-man groans. “It would’ve been better if I _had_ managed to stick with that name now, because what they pinned on me is actually way worse. I’m the _Elongated Man.”_

“...Oh, wow.” Sue tries to keep a straight face for all of five seconds before doubling over with laughter so hard she needs to cling to the railing for support. “Oh, wow, that-that is _really,_ really bad, how did you get stuck with _that?”_ She manages to choke out through her tears. “Did you let a barely pubescent twelve year old with a bad sense of humor name you?”

“Worse,” Sue-is-not-calling-him-Elongated-Man says grimly, shaking his head. “A reporter.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s way worse. My life’s kinda been a media circus for the past year or so since I publicly came out.” Sue leans back against the railing as her laughter subsides some. “Still, how could somebody, even someone heartless, be as cruel as to call you the _Elongated Man?_ That’s… That’s _really_ awful.”

“Trust me, I know.” He rolls his eyes. “It’s _not_ the kind of fame I wanted, that’s for sure. I’m gonna go down in superhero history next to Vibe as ‘guy with the most sex-jokey name’. Don’t tell Vibe I said that by the way. He’s a great guy. He just… Ended up with a really unfortunate name.”

She snorts. Vibe’s not the best name, but at least you can _pretend_ that it isn’t terrible. You can’t really do that with ‘Elongated Man.’ “I’m not gonna call you Elongated Man”-even saying it this many times is making her start to laugh again-“so why don’t you tell me your real name?”

“My real name? You mean like… Barry?” He half smiles like he’s telling a joke she’s not in on.

“Is your name Barry?” Sue raises her eyebrows. “You don’t look like a Barry, but I can’t see the three inches of space around your eyes to tell properly.”

“My name isn’t Barry,” he admits. “I’m not supposed to tell you my real name. If the Flash were here he’d get tell me not to tell you and then get all the way up on his high horse and start talking about how telling people our secret identities puts them in danger, like half the damn city doesn’t know who he is.”

“Well,” Sue says quietly, leaning toward him a little bit, “the Flash isn’t here to stop you.” She pulls off her white glove and holds out her hand. “I’m Sue Dearbon.”

He looks at her and then looks at her glove and then beams, shaking her hand. “I’m Ralph. Gotta talk to the Flash about last name rules and all, but… That’s my name.”

Sue grins. “Nice to meet you.” She looks through the glass door to the people inside who are either extremely good at ignoring the fact that she’s outside and talking to the first superhero she’s ever met, or simply haven’t noticed that she ever left. The second one seems more likely. “So, what were you planning on doing once you eventually successfully crashed my party?”

“Hell if I know. The Flash and his team are trying to get me to stop drinking, because apparently I have a ‘problem’ and need to go to ‘therapy’, but there’s also food and potentially some cute girls in there, so at least there’s something worth it in there.” Ralph pauses. At least the lighting out here is awful, so Sue can’t see him blushing. “But. Well. Uh. Now there’s you. So. You made it worth it.”

“Really?” Sue rests her elbows on the railing again and looks out over the city. The window itself isn’t very high up, but the house is up on a hill, which means there’s a pretty great view of downtown Central City. She smiles a little to herself. “Do you say that to all the girls you find on balconies trying to get away from the parties you were trying to crash by climbing through windows?”

“Well, if I ever meet any as beautiful as you, I’ll let you know.” It was probably meant to sound smooth, but his voice breaks halfway through, which makes him blush even harder and turn to face the city too so that Sue won’t be able to see how embarrassed he is. “Oh, man, that was _really_ lame.”

“Oh, for sure,” Sue agrees. “You’re very lucky that I like lame.”

“Hey!” Ralph protests. There’s a noise from beside her and out of the corner of her eye she sees him take his mask off. Not that it makes much difference. He looks pretty much the same, since it was really hardly covering any of his face. “Ugh, I hate that thing.”

“What would the Flash say if he heard you say that?” Sue teases, rubbing her upper arms. She _is_ starting to get kind of cold… There’s a chilly breeze kicking up, that’s for sure.

“I've got no idea. Probably start telling me about how with great power comes great responsibility. I think that since he’s the only one of the two of us with a power that’s actually _great,_ he should be the one with all the responsibility, but that’s just me.” Ralph shrugs, frowning when he sees Sue’s shivering. “Hey, shouldn’t you be back inside at your fancy party? It’s probably warmer in there. And I bet they’re looking for you.”

“I can stay out for a little while longer,” Sue decides. “And most of them are only pretending to care about me to make my parents happy, anyway. It’s not like they actually know me. Most of them just decided to pretend to support me because it’d make them look good.”

Ralph blinks at her. Sue shrugs a little. It’s _true._ Most of them have a ton of money, but she could count on one hand the amount who have actually donated large sums to or even founded charities for good causes. Hell, half of them don’t even know what a trans person is-she’s had to explain it about eight times tonight. She _knew_ she should’ve convinced her parents to let her set up a big projector with the definition of it up on the wall.

“If you’re cold, you really should go inside. I can get out of here the way I came.” Ralph nudges her arm with his, and Sue suddenly gets an idea even as he says, “It’s always harder going down than going up, but I can probably just stretch all the way down there, right?”

“What if you didn’t leave? But you didn’t have to crash the party to come?” Sue starts beaming even wider when he starts catching on. “You could be my date. It’d be a scandal. But the fun kind. My parents will give me some shit for it, but who cares? No way anybody in there will recognize your face, either, so you wouldn’t have to put your mask back on. You could eat all the food you wanted-I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff left.”

Ralph takes her hand again and grins. Huh. His smile really is kind of cute. Wide and lopsided and friendly. “I’m in."

Sue opens the balcony doors from the outside and pulls him in with her, laughing when Ralph immediately puffs up his chest. He practically starts glowing when half the eyes in the place immediately turn to look at them, and Sue can see her parents sending her reproachful looks from where they’re mingling within the crowd.

At least they always support her decisions. A few of the other people here-mostly men who wouldn’t have been caught dead with someone like her if she didn’t come from a family with money-look downright pissed. Whether that’s because she’s currently holding hands with a superhero or because he’s excitedly announcing to anyone who will listen (which is everyone) that he’s her date at a volume that humans shouldn’t be capable of remains to be seen.

Yeah, this is _definitely_ a welcome change from trying to avoid family members who keep ‘accidentally’ slipping up and using the wrong name. Being at the center of attention is nothing new, but this is almost the first time it’s actually been fun for her. Which has a lot to do with the fact that Ralph is currently picking her up bridal style with some difficulty. Being known for bringing a superhero crasher to your coming-out party is definitely not the worst thing in the world, in Sue’s opinion.

Sue can tell that she and Ralph are going to be great friends.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm danteramon on tumblr and whenever I think about RalphSue I go "oh fuck yes."


End file.
